CHAPTER ELEVEN
Agent Loraine Sarikosca watched Gabriel Bleak from the adjacent roof. He was crossing to a corner of the roof opposite the agents coming off the fire escape. She saw him look up at the choppers, and at the drone darting between them.
He was about a hundred feet away. He turned to look at her as he ran...
To look right at her.
For a moment it was as if he were much closer to her—in that brief glance it felt to her as if he were standing in front of her, the two of them outside of time, gazing at one another in warm curiosity.
Then the contact was broken—and the agents were running at Bleak, shouting, and he was throwing energy bullets at them. One of the men yelled in pain and dropped his gun. The other one ducked the sizzling energy bullet—and Bleak ran past them...heading toward another fire escape.
Suppose he was killed, trying to escape? The thought made her clutch up, inside.
She was no longer sure of her footing in CCA. What she'd seen in the north, and the hints Helman had dropped, made her wonder if any of them knew what they were doing. She was still scratching mosquito bites, still tired from the long trip down from the arctic circle, and she'd had only one fitful night's sleep.
The artifact. Nothing seemed to quite make sense, anymore. The implications stretched too far— beyond the limits of human perception. Spying on terrorist cells in Syria seemed simple in comparison.
She shook her head glumly. She had asked Helman if in some way they could bring the suppressor to use on Bleak, and temporarily neutralize his abilities. But the effective range of the suppressor was only about five feet. And getting him within that range in a situation like this—and with a device that required a great deal of energy—was not practical. Not yet.
Helman had another plan for neutralizing Bleak. Sharpshooters with tranquilizer guns were taking up positions nearby. She doubted that was going to work.
The lead agent pursuing Bleak had a handgun out. Not a trank gun. The man aimed it...and Bleak snapped an energy bullet at the gun. It struck true and the agent shouted, dropped the gun—its bullets going off. Rounds whizzed, a window broke somewhere.
And Bleak was running full tilt to the rim of the roof.
Loraine caught her breath when she realized that he was running past the fire escape and seemed to be about to leap into empty space between buildings. He couldn't hope to jump the thirty feet, maybe thirty-five, to the next roof. Surely he couldn't cross so wide a gap the way he'd risen over the car in the alley.
“No, don't!” she shouted involuntarily, her heart thumping. Aware that Arnie, standing on her left, was looking curiously at her. Bleak stepped out into space—
And ran on air, across the space between the two buildings, defying gravity to the next, slightly lower roof. Where no agents had been assigned—because no one thought Bleak could get there. But he could. His bridge reached just far enough.
He'd done it again—some kind of invisible force holding him up, drawn from the Hidden, giving him a bridge to the next roof. It had never occurred to them it could reach so far.
She watched him running across the lower roof—she heard a pop, saw a glint tracking toward Bleak from another roof, to Bleak's left—and saw the projectile turn from him at the last moment, as if it had changed course on its own. A tranquilizer dart. He'd blocked it somehow. Another pop—and this dart too turned away at the last moment.
Then Bleak was rushing down the fire escape of the other building—Loraine noted that he hadn't tried to “walk on air” off the top of the roof, though that would've been faster. Which suggested his power had limits—and he'd probably reached them.
She was already moving as these thoughts came to her; she rushed toward the door to the stairs of the tenement they had set up on, ran ahead of Arnie and the others, taking two and three steps at a time to get down.
Because if CCA got desperate enough, they might order him shot down with real bullets. He couldn't hit every gun trained on him with an energy bullet.
Which meant that Gabriel Bleak's best chance of survival was capture. This time he wasn't going to get away from her.
I'm not going to let her go this time, Bleak decided. She can tell me about Sean.
177
He was darting across the street, through traffic, with his senses fully alive, using the Hidden to make him hyperaware of the vehicles, the necessary timing. Someone else would probably have been hit. But he slipped between a fast-moving cab and two smaller, frantically honking cars, and the agents coming behind him had to wait till there was room to get through. A drone was watching him, and people in the choppers—he felt someone else watching from a rooftop nearby. Saw himself from above, for a moment, from another point of view...
It was her.
Then he darted between two tenements, with just room enough between them for a fire escape and trash cans. His boots crunched over chips of plaster and flakes of old paint. He felt it when they'd lost sight of him for a moment. But Bleak knew they'd be on him in seconds. To the right was a door leading into a tenement. It had a padlock on it—the tenement was empty, condemned, scheduled to be torn down. It was the work of a moment to charge the lock with energy, make it burst apart.
Bleak pushed into the dim, small room smelling of mold—once a kitchen. The appliances had been pulled out, their shapes were dimly visible, outlined in brown on the walls. He hurried through, into a dark hallway—made an energy bullet in his hand and held it up for illumination. Heard voices outside. Footsteps.
He came to a cavernous space where two walls had been knocked down; living room, dining room, bedroom, combined into one space. There was a door opposite. He ran to it, used the energy he'd gathered for light to break its lock, and left it slightly ajar. Then he went to the darkest corner of the large room and stood stock-still. He pressed into the corner, reached into the Hidden, and began to weave darkness around himself...around his entire body.
You needed a big space for this, and a dim room—he hadn't had either when they'd chased him in Seamus's place—and he had both here. He gathered energies around him that caught light and turned it to the sides. In moments, just as they entered the room, small flashlights flickering in their hands, he'd cocooned himself in darkness.
He couldn't see them; they couldn't see him. If they looked closely at his cocoon of shadow, they'd realize it was unnatural. They'd have him. But the eye tended to slide past it in a dark room.
Bleak knew this wasn't going to work if they had that detector with them. But he'd thrown a monkey wrench in their plans—they hadn't anticipated his getting off that rooftop. Probably figured he couldn't make an air bridge that stretched that far. Chances were they were scattered all over looking for him. Did they all have one of those detectors?
“The son of a bitch came through here.”
“We should have brought that Krasnoff character, Arnie.”
“Can't trust Krasnoff enough, the doctor says.”
“Or one of those detectors.”
“They don't work all the time. Some isotope-leakage problem. Just one that's good—and it's with Sarikosca.”
“Unit Three? He out there on Sullivan?...Yeah, we did. No. He's not in here. You had to have missed him.”
“The door's open here—he came through!”
“You hear that, Unit Three? The door's open, looks like he busted the lock.... Well, you looked away, then. Maybe he used some trick to get past you.”
There was a pause. Bleak felt strength draining from him. He drew energies from the Hidden for his workings—but he needed the strength of his body to direct them. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep the cocoon of shadow up. Maybe another twenty seconds, at most.
He concentrated to keep it steady—especially when a flicker of light showed through. One of them had swept his flashlight across the dark corner he was in.
“Naw—I'm looking at the room, it's empty, there's nothing to hide behind in here. He's gone out that door somehow.... Yeah we've got people checking upstairs too.... I'll look but I don't think—”
Footsteps.
“You guys find him up there?”
“That's negative, there's a big metal gate blocking the stairs going up and the lock's on it, hasn't been broken.”
“You copy that, Unit Three? He's not upstairs.... Okay we're coming out, he had to have slipped past you.”
They left the room; Bleak felt them go. He waited as long as he could, then with a sigh of relief he dropped the cocoon of darkness and sank to his knees to rest.
All he had to do now was wait—they'd move on, searching for him. “Greg?” he whispered. He'd asked the ghost to stick close. “You there?” “I'm here. “
“There's a woman agent—only one I've seen in this crowd. You see her?”
“I do. Black hair? Really cute broad? “
“That's her.... Want you to do something for me.”
***
EARLY THAT EVENING, in Brooklyn Heights. Murray grinning at Loraine from the door of his condo as she came wearily up the steps.
“Knew you were coming,” he said, opening the screen door. “The cats got up in the window, meowing like crazy. 'She's here!'“ He was a plump man with rosy cheeks, big brown shoes, exactly combed short brown hair, a tendency to wear golf shirts with little alligators on them, and creased khaki pants.
The big, old, shingled house had been divided into two condos. Loraine had persuaded Murray to take the one next door. They shared the garden. She was glad to get home and pick up her cats.
“They're glad to see you,” Murray said, smiling. “But I spoil them. I don't think they want to leave me.” He was her neighbor and the closest thing she had to a friend in New York, now that
Chelsea had gone to Afghanistan. When Loraine had a day off, she and Murray would go to museums together—he loved classical art, and impressionism—and to flower and garden shows. And, now and then, to a musical. “What good is having a gay friend if you don't go to musicals with him?” Murray had asked, one day, bringing her the tickets.
When she was away, he watered her plants and fed her cats. An orange tabby and a Siamese, the cats paced sinuously around her ankles, meowing furiously, rubbing their heads on her.
“They sound like they're mad at me,” Loraine said. “They're always mad when I've left them any amount of time. Even though I know they have a great time with Uncle Murray.”
“They haven't had their dinner yet, that could be the big issue here.”
She let them into her place, and Murray came in for tea. They drank tea, the cats taking turns in isd her lap, and she talked of everything but what was really on her mind. Asking him about the classes he was taking at the Art Institute of Brooklyn, whether his boyfriend's father was willing to meet him yet; Murray's thoughts about helping her decorate her place. Loraine making herself talk.
“There's something bothering you, girl?” Murray asked, at last, glancing at his gold Rolex watch. A gift from his boyfriend, Ahmed.
If only she could talk to him about it. Okay, well, I know I told you I work for the State Department, but in fact I work for a spin-off organization and we monitor supernaturally gifted people.
Not likely. “I'm fine,” Loraine said. “Just tired. Diplomatic stuff. People angry on both sides. You get very frustrated. But I can't talk about it, corny as that sounds.”
Murray grinned. “Ten-four! Then I'm gonna go and make dinner for Ahmed. He likes you, wouldn't mind at all if you came.”
“That's sweet but I just want to veg...and think.”
'“Kay.” He took his teacup to the sink, washed it out, came back to kiss her on the cheek, and went home to make dinner for his boyfriend.
“Must be nice to have someone to make dinner for,” Loraine said, patting Mongy. He yowled with full Siamese dissonance. His full name was Mongkut, named after the Thai king who inspired The King and I. The meeting of the values of Western civilization and the exotic culture of the East. Like forcing containment on magic?
She thought, CCA: The Musical. She laughed. Then she shook her head sadly. Thinking of the man strapped to the concrete chair.
But what's your excuse?
Loraine looked around and thought that she'd never quite moved in, though she'd been here more than a year. She had one brown leather sofa, a big-screen TV she almost never used, an MP3 player that wasn't hooked up; an old record player purchased at a flea market that was hooked up, with vinyl records stacked beside it. Books piled on their sides against the wall, waiting for the bookcase that Murray was going to help her pick out. A Rembrandt print Murray had bought and framed for her over a brass-mantel fireplace. The cream-colored walls seemed sterile and boring. Dusty silk flowers drooped in a crystal vase on her little dining room table, just off the small living room. Her bedroom was even sparser. And the house smelled of used cat litter even though the cats hadn't been here for days.
Loraine sighed and went to check her e-mail. Afraid there might be an order for her to return to work. Maybe they'd caught Bleak. They'd want her there for the interrogation.
No, she thought suddenly. They haven't caught him. I'd know if they'd caught him. Absurd. How would she know that?
Loraine went to her bedroom, trailed by the cats. She sat at the little redwood desk, booted up her computer. She would have to hold at least one cat on her lap while she checked her e-mail. Mongy got there first.
She was hoping for an e-mail from Chelsea, who was close as Loraine had to a best girlfriend. Chelsea was a DIA crypto specialist in Afghanistan. Lately they'd been losing helicopter gunships and Chelsea had been assigned to—
“Hello, Agent Sarikosca,” said someone, behind her. A man's voice, familiar, speaking softly.
Where was her purse?'Her gun was in it. She realized she'd left it in the living room.
Feeling stiff with fear, Loraine turned slowly in her swivel chair—Mongy on her lap swiveling with her—and caught her breath.
Gabriel Bleak was leaning against the bedroom doorframe, holding her purse up by the strap, with one finger. He wore jeans, boots, a black T-shirt for some rock band, the name largely obscured by the unbuttoned, white overshirt. “Looking for your purse?” he asked lightly. “You left it in the other room. You shouldn't be that far from your gun...Loraine.”
She swallowed. Feeling strange. “How'd you find me?”
“Oh, you were followed home. By a friend of mine. Since the guy following you is dead, and invisible to most people, you didn't notice you were being followed. He actually sat next to you in the agency car, in the back. Nice guy, name of Greg.” Bleak delved through the purse, came up with her pistol. “I'll hold on to this. Just don't want to be shot today. I almost was, earlier, and that was unpleasant enough. You ever been shot?”
She shook her head.
Bleak chuckled grimly. “Ruins your whole day, let me tell you.” He tossed the purse on her bed. “I was looking at some of your records. Mostly old ones. Vinyl. I bet your mother gave them to you.” She nodded numbly. Then shook her head. “My aunt.”
“Procol Harum, Cream, the Supremes, Janis Ian, Simon and Garfunkel, Moody Blues, Rolling Stones, Beatles, early Tom Waits...some good ones. You listen to any of those? Pretty old-school.” “What do you want?”
“I noticed Joni Mitchell on the record player. Very talented. Never could get into her. I'm more about Polly Jean Harvey.”
The cats walked over to him and rubbed against his legs. He smiled. “Animals usually like me.” He squatted, to pet the cats with his left hand. Her gun was held loosely in Bleak's right hand. Mongy, the traitor, purred. “In fact they always like me.”
I could jump him, she thought. I could take one step, brace my left foot, kick him on the point of his chin, grab the gun as he goes back.
But she had read his file. His experience in hand-to-hand combat was undoubted; his alertness was a kind of charge that crackled the air around him.
She decided against it and said, “You routinely break into people's homes? Women alone—that a big thing with you?”
He scratched Mongy under the jaw. “You routinely set up people trying to arrest drug dealers? That a big thing with you? You know I had to shoot that man dead?” He shook his head. “I figure Gandalf was along because it would have looked suspicious if she'd been there alone. And I figure he was supposed to surrender to me, and I'd have been burdened with those two when I took them out of the building, and your people would have closed in and I'd have been pretty hard-pressed to stop them. But you didn't figure on how paranoid he'd get after he tweaked out in that apartment. You can't count on drugged-up people to be your happy little puppets, Agent Sarikosca.” He stood up, looked at her thoughtfully, tossed the gun to his left hand, back to his right. “I hadn't killed anyone since the Rangers. Seeing people die when it's not my doing—that doesn't bother me much. Saw someone shot dead by a cop just the other day. Saw worse about once a week in Afghanistan. But personally stopping someone's path through life, just cutting it off—even an a*shole like that...” He shook his head. “I don't like to do it unless I'm forced to. Because of where they're headed, afterwards: to the Wilderness. In the afterlife, right? When you've looked into the Wilderness...” He shook his head.
“Once you've seen that, you like them to have a chance to get their heads right, in this life. Small as that possibility might be. Now that dumb son of a bitch won't have that chance.”
What a strange man, she thought, looking at him. Entirely apart from his supernatural abilities. He was angry he'd had to kill Leonard Mearson, the man who'd called himself Gandalf. He shot him in the head and he's angry at me for it.
The strangeness was in his eyes too. As if they reflected a light that wasn't there.
And those hands—subtly expressive, gentle with the cats. But he'd used the same hand that was stroking the tabby to shoot a man dead, not much more than an hour ago. And those hands could form orbs of violet fire.
Loraine made herself look away from him. Feeling some of the uncanny attraction she'd felt, on the roof. Remembering the shock of contact when she'd watched him on the surveillance video.
The feelings he conjured in her, just by being there, made it hard to come up with the right course of action. A course she needed badly right now.
“Someone probably saw you coming in here,” she said, glancing past him. “They'll call the cops.”
He shook his head. Completely unworried. “I was careful.”
“And—the man you shot wasn't my 'puppet.' His real name was Mearson. And he...none of that was my plan. I was informed they'd set up a kind of sting to lure you to a particular address. And I was asked to help.”
“You weren't much help, though, were you?” He smiled, a relaxed smile...but again she had to look away.
“I was supposed to...to interface with you after they got you. They were going to surround you, make you surrender. Or, after the tranquilizer darts.... After you woke up.” He chuckled. “Tranquilizer darts. Like a wild animal.”
“You're operating like a wild animal,” she said suddenly. “Breaking in here. And you talk about a wilderness—you're in one out there, playing with that power. You people—you should be working for your country.”
“What happens to people like me who do work for CCA, Agent Sarikosca?” He wasn't looking at her. He was opening the cylinder of her .38. His confidence was irritating.
Bleak emptied the bullets from the gun so they clattered onto the floor. Mongy and Festus started batting the bullets around.
He took a pair of needle-nose pliers from his pocket.
She stared. Was he going to use those pliers on her?
He used them to pull the firing pin from her gun.
“That's the second perfectly good gun that you've ruined,” she said.
“You can put the firing pin back in later. And you didn't answer my question, about what happens to ShadowComm people who work for you? We generally never hear from them again.” “ I... that' s classified.”
“Things are classified because they're embarrassing to someone.” Bleak put the firing pin and the pliers in his pocket and tossed her gun onto the bed beside her purse. “Now, we're going to meet some people. The kind you want to recruit. You and me.”
“You're taking me out of here? You're abducting me?”
He shrugged. “Your people are looking for me anyway. I don't have much to lose if I...abduct you.”
“What if I don't want to go?” Loraine demanded. “What if I scream, throw things through the window?”
“I'm armed, and I've got this too.” He formed an energy bullet in his hand, let it glow there for a moment, then closed his hand on it, extinguishing it. When he opened his hand, it was gone.
“And you'd—what? Throw that little ball of light at me and...set my hair on fire? Burn me with it?” Loraine shook her head. “I don't think you'd hurt me, Bleak. Not unless it was self-defense.” She felt sure of it. But she had no clue how she knew.
Bleak grunted. “You're right. I guess I wouldn't hurt you. But...there are other ways.” He smiledas broadly and spread his hands. “I have 'magic powers,' you remember.”
Play along, she thought. Go with him. This was a CCA opportunity.
That was the reason, wasn't it, she wanted to go with him? It had nothing to do with the way her pulse raced when he looked at her.
He held her gaze steadily. “You know about a guy named Coster?”
Loraine shrugged. Not wanting to react to the name. “Just that—he used to work for us.”
“He's not working for you now?”
“If he was, I wouldn't tell you.” She'd heard there was more than one track for luring Bleak. Coster was the other one.
She stood up. “Okay, tough guy, let's go. Maybe—we can negotiate something along the way.” “Negotiate what? My surrender?” He seemed amused. “It wouldn't be surrender. It'd be recruitment.”
“Your recruitment is worse than the army's. And that's going some. You guys have stop-loss?” He chuckled. “Okay, let's go.”
As if they understood him, the cats set up a desperate meowing. “Oh, okay, sure,” Bleak told the cats. “We'll feed you first.”
***
IT WAS JUST SHADING from dusk to darkness. The warm air of the new summer night was like a blanket draped over their shoulders. A blanket they shared.
“So you think we're the oppressive fist of the regime and you're the innocent artists of the supernatural?” Loraine said drily, as they walked down her tree-lined street in Brooklyn Heights. They'd fed the cats, Bleak seeming to take pleasure in spooning out the cat food for them himself.
“Things are rarely so simple,” Bleak said, with a wintry smile. “But, yeah—that's the main idea.”
She had her purse on a strap over her right shoulder. Bleak was striding along on her left. She could slip her hand in the purse, trigger the “find me” homing beeper she'd been given in case of emergency. But if she did that, the agency would come in force—and she suspected this little trek with Bleak was an opportunity she'd never have again. A chance to peer into the Shadow Community. They might get Bleak, but they might lose a lot more.
Still, he'd broken into her place, and that pissed her off. She stopped. He took another step, then turned to look at her.
“Bleak—you've got your own gun with you. If you're going to shoot me, best shoot me now.” “Do I have to?” He made a tsk sound. “Seems like a waste.” “Of a good bullet?”
“Of a good woman. Better than you know.”
She snorted. “Oh, thanks, I'll put it on my resume. Bleak, I mean it—if you're going to try to abduct me, you'll have to shoot me first. But I'm not in the mood to just stand here and passively let you kidnap me. If I go with you, it's got to be my choice.”
He surprised her by laughing. “Okay! You're not abducted! You called my bluff!” He gestured like an old-time aristocrat, rolling his hand magnanimously. “You want to go home, go! You want to call the police or your agency, do it, and I'll split.” He paused, looking at her more solemnly. “But I'm hoping you won't do that. I think you should come with me. Without telling anyone about it. There are people for you to meet. You want to learn about us—that's part of your job. So maybe that's what you should do. It makes no sense for me to take you with me. But that's the plan.”
“Making no sense is the plan?”
“There, see, you've got me figured out. In a way, making no sense is the plan. I'm hoping you'll see we can be trusted with our freedom. Maybe...maybe...in exchange, we can help your agency. Depending on what you want from us. Working with you people...ah, man. We've got mixed feelings. Tell me something.” He looked at her with a probing curiosity. He kept his distance—but she felt as if he were touching her face. “You seem...like someone with a conscience. You really feel like you belong at CCA?”
The question made her angry and ashamed at once. But she had an answer ready. “You ever hear of a man named Troy Gulcher?”
“Name sounds familiar. Something from the news. A jailbreak?” “That's right. You don't know him from any other context?” “If I did—to quote a certain CCA agent—I wouldn't tell you.”
“He's one of your kind. Some version, anyway. And he killed a lot of people, using his connection with...with the thing you call the Hidden. He's killed prison guards—people with families. Gulcher created a—” She broke off a moment, at a loss for words. “I couldn't tell from the files what it was...but it comes across as mass demonic possession. People went mad and killed one another. He used that to get away. And he did something else at a casino in Atlantic City—a lot of people there died.” She shook her head. “I don't really understand howthey died. But Troy Gulcher was mixed up in it. And then there was another man who may have been using magic to start a fire, burn down a restaurant—he killed a police officer.”
“Yeah. The fire imps. I know about him. I didn't know him personally. You coming with me or not? We can talk about it on the way.”
She hesitated. But she couldn't let the opportunity slip away. “Sure,” she said at last. “Let's go.” They started down the sidewalk again. Crossing the Rubicon, she thought. “Point is, Bleak—how do you rationalize Gulcher? And how about the man who set a cop on fire?”
Bleak frowned and waved dismissively. “Those people aren't part of ShadowComm—not the groups I know. They're not La'hood. They seem to be something new.”
“You're claiming your people 'don't use their power for evil'?” Loraine asked skeptically.
“They're not my people. I can't speak for them. I'm not really a part of their community. We have dealings, the ShadowComm and me—and I've known some of them for a long time. The ones I know aren't into violence. They aren't into misusing their talents. Not in any bigway. Some you might call a bit borderline, but...As for this Gulcher, he was picked up in Atlantic City, right? We had a spiritual blackout there.”
The phrase spiritual blackout interested her. “What's that, exactly?”
“Couldn't see there, in the Hidden—like something was covering it up. Some parts especially. So something is hiding that guy from us. Maybe because we're not on the same side as he is.” “You chose a...a side?”
“Sort of. And sort of not. Neutrality is good. But you don't want to play ball with anything flat- iaa out evil, either. And some things are flat-out evil.”
They fell silent as he turned left toward a subway entrance, and she went calmly along, matching his pace, as if they were old friends.
He said, “Well, here's someone I know.” He stopped at a little kiosk next to a newspaper stand. In the kiosk a small, dark, middle-aged woman sold ice cream. She wore a sparkly blue sari and had a little red dot on her forehead and melancholy black eyes. But her eyes lit up when Bleak approached her.
“Mr. Gabriel!” Her accent was southern India. “How good to see you, I don't see you at Grand Central!”
“Of course you don't,” he said, smiling. “You moved out of Grand Central.” She shook her head sadly. “Rent was too high for me, there, even so little a shop, that one. But more customers there.”
“I just happen to be passing through and here you are. Have to have my rocky road. You still got some?”
“Sure I got some rocky road! One for the lady?”
Bleak turned to Loraine “You like rocky road? Maybe chocolate-chip mint?” “How'd you know I liked chocolate-chip mint?” “Just a guess. A scoop of each, Sarojin.”
Sarojin made up two ice cream cones. Bleak paid, dropped $2 into the tip box, and chatted with the woman for several minutes as Loraine ate her ice cream and nervously watched the sky. Some abduction, she thought ruefully.
After a moment she found herself enjoying the ice cream, enjoying Bleak's company the way someone would enjoy the sound of the sea though only half aware of hearing it.
Finishing the ice cream, they walked on toward the subway entrance. They ate companionably, and another thought came to her. “Was that woman—one of yours? ShadowComm?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “No. Just someone I used to buy ice cream from at Grand Central. Kind of a friend of mine.” He stopped halfway down the grime-blackened steps. She paused— just like a regular companion who wondered why the other had stopped—and he dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a folded napkin. “You're getting clown makeup from ice cream. There.”
They looked at one another for a moment. Then he shrugged and continued down the steps. She went with him.
Loraine felt a powerful impulse to trust Bleak. But that feeling might have a supernatural cause. He might be using his abilities to influence her in some subtle way. The CCA didn't know the full extent of his power.
But she didn't really believe he was “influencing” her—not that way. Somehow...she simply trusted him. She felt as if she'd known him for years.
Maybe, she thought, as they walked up to the machine selling subway cards, it's the other kind of magic.
Loraine shook her head. I'm being stupid. Like an adolescent girl.
It occurred to her that after being with Bleak for only a few minutes she'd already found herself breaking CCA regulations: she'd told him about Gulcher. She hadn't told him everything. But still— she'd blurted classified data to Bleak. And she'd broken situation protocol by not using the beeper; not calling for assistance. Why?
Then she realized that CCA might be coming anyway. Dr. Helman had hinted she was under surveillance. She glanced around—and saw a nondescript van parked nearby, its windows dark. For all she knew they might be sitting in there, watching, right now. A helicopter was flying over—it seemed on its way somewhere. But who knew for sure? It could be them.
Were there listening devices in her apartment? They could have heard some of the conversation she'd had with Bleak.
General Forsythe liked to project cheery comradeship. But she didn't trust him—and she knew Forsythe didn't trust her. That beeper in her purse itself might be something more. It had been issued to her in-house. They could be using it to listen to her right now.
Loraine made up her mind. She took the beeper out of her purse and dropped it into a trash can.
After they'd walked on a few more steps, she said, “Bleak—we'd better get into the subway—and get out of the area fast.” She was a little amazed at herself for saying it. “I mean...really fast. Otherwise...this trip could end up taking you someplace you weren't expecting to go.”